Doki Doki Literature Club

Warning: This entry contains spoilers.

About

Doki Doki Literature Club is a free-to-play anime-style psychological horror game presented as a romance visual novel, which was released for Windows and Mac systems by the game development studio Team Salvato in late September 2017.

History

On February 12th, 2017, Team Salvato founder Dan Salvato posted an “ask me anything” thread to the /r/smashbros subreddit, where he hinted about the game, saying “I’m also doing some stuff for a literature club.”^[1] On September 8th, 2017, Salvato tweeted that he would “reveal information” regarding his “never-before-seen next big project” the following week (shown below).^[3]

Tweet by Dan Salvato hinting that he is doing stuff for a literature club

The following week, the Team Salvato Twitter feed was launched.^[4] On September 22nd, Doki Doki Literature Club was released for download on the website DDLC.moe^[7] and Steam. Additionally, the trailer for the game was uploaded to the Team Salvato YouTube channel (shown below).

Premise

In the game, the player is invited by their childhood friend Sayori to join a literature club at school. There, he meets Yuri, Natsuki, and Monika, the club president. All the girls seem to express some romantic interest in the player-character. By “creating poems,” a mechanic in which players select words that either resonate more with either Sayori, Yuki, or Natsuki, leading the player down their “route.” Monika does not have a route.

The game is presented in three acts.

At the end of the first act, Sayori confesses her love to the player character. Regardless of whether the character accepts or rejects Sayori’s confession, Sayori hangs herself. The game then abruptly restarts and the events of the plot happen again, only this time altered to go in motion without Sayori. This time through the game, technological glitches and strange occurrences dominate the action. The character Yuri becomes psychologically and violently obsessed with the player character, and the player can not escape her route. At the end of the second act, Yuri confesses her love to the player character, and again, regardless of the player’s answer, Yuri kills herself. It is then revealed that the character Monika is “sentient” and in love with the player, and has used her powers to manipulate the other characters and delete files in the game in an effort to force the player to fall in love with her. The game ends when the player exits the game and physically deletes Monika’s character file from their computer.

Alternate Reality Game

On September 23rd, 2017, Redditor Mithost submitted a post to the /r/arg^[10] subreddit about files contained in the game’s program folder, which revealed that several .chr files contained secret QR codes, images and messages as part of an alternate reality game.

Online Presence

Fandom

On September 24th, 2017, the /r/DDLC^[5] subreddit was created for discussions about the video game. On September 26th, YouTube ManlyBadassHero uploaded the first in a series of “Let’s Play” videos of the game (shown below).

On October 6th, the Doki Doki Literature Club Wiki was launched.^[2] On Twitch,^[6] a directory was created for streams of the game.

Related Memes

Just Monika

WARNING: Spoilers

In the game’s second act, it becomes clear to the player that a force is trying to drive the player to choosing Monika in the dating sim. At one point, Natsuki’s dialogue is seemingly taken over and the face on her character art erased as she suggests she and Yuri are no good for the player and the player should focus their attention on Monika. The game then requires you to click on a button which says “Just Monika” (scene shown below).

The line became a meme within the game’s fandom as a cryptic reference to the game’s final reveal. Artwork and humorous remixes depicting Monika as a yandere for comedic effect have grown popular online. On October 6th, 2017, YouTuber Pengu uploaded an edit of Lou Bega’s Mambo No. 5 that changed all the women’s names in the song to Monika, gaining over 44,000 views (shown below, left). On October 14th, YouTuber ANGELILYworks uploaded a clip from Family Guy which also poked fun at Monika’s attraction to the player.

Additionally, the meme has spread online in various ways without directly addressing the game’s ending. There is an /r/justmonika^[12] subreddit with over 600 followers, as well as a Twitter account for the character,^[13] which was launched several months before the game’s release.